


Blood and Tears

by Kittycrackers (Calacious)



Category: General Hospital
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Family, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Kittycrackers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spinelli is shot trying to be a hero. Jason comes to some startling realizations as he awaits for word on his friend's condition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Written for gh_unwrapped (unexpected twist), and hc_bingo (wildcard - family).

Twenty-four hours ago, Jason thought that his life couldn't get much worse, but that was before Spinelli was shot by Helena because he'd jumped in front of Ethan in an attempt to prove to Maxie that he could be a hero. 

The bullet had ploughed its way through Spinelli's collarbone and out through the back of his shoulder blade. It had also shaved a few years off of Jason's life. He didn't know that one person could lose so much blood and still be alive. 

It had thrown him for a loop and made Jason reconsider what, and who, he valued in life. A few people didn't make that list. Sonny was chief amongst them, with Sam pulling up the rear. Infidelity was not something he could easily forgive and forget, much as he'd tried to. It was like having a white elephant in the room at all times. He wanted to forgive her, trust her again, love her unreservedly, but, he couldn't. 

“Jason?” Monica laid a hand on his shoulder, and sat down next to him in one of the crappy hospital waiting room chairs.

“How is he?” Jason didn’t beat around the bush, the look in his mother’s eyes made tears well up in his eyes, and he shook his head. “No,” he said, “no.”

“Jason, honey,” Monica said and Jason buried his face against her shoulder, letting her comfort him for the first time in his memory. 

“Jason, sweetheart, I need you to listen.” Monica pulled back from him. “Jason, it’s not what you think.”

Having not slept in over twenty-four hours, Jason was not exactly thinking clearly, and it was hard for him to register what his mother was saying. He brushed his tears aside and forced himself to focus on what it was that his mother was trying to tell him. 

“Jason, he’s alive,” Monica said quickly, “he’s alive, but there were some complications.”

Jason inched forward on his seat, his heart lurching in his chest. “What kind of complications?” 

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Monica said.

Jason nodded, he could attest to that, and if it hadn’t been for Epiphany’s insistence that he get himself cleaned up, he’d still be drenched in it. Instead, he was clean, no trace of his friend’s blood anywhere on him, and dressed in a pair of scrubs that Epiphany had scrounged up from somewhere. Jason didn’t even bat an eye at the color of the scrubs – pink. 

“And?”

“And,” Monica paused, and the look in her eyes made Jason clench his fists, “and, he’s got a rare blood type Jason.”

“So, get him some blood,” Jason growled, not understanding what the big deal was.

“Jason, Spinelli has your blood type,” Monica said, and looked at him as though he was supposed to understand some sort of deeper truth.

“He can have as much as of my blood as he needs,” Jason said, standing, and walking toward the room Spinelli had been wheeled into.

Monica’s hand on his arm stopped him, and he turned to face her. 

“Jason, I know it was wrong of me, but I, it was too much of a coincidence,” Monica said.

“What? What did you do?” Jason had no idea what his mother could do that would make her so nervous.

“I ran a D.N.A. test,” Monica said, letting the news sink in, “Jason, he’s yours. Spinelli is your son.”

Jason’s knees buckled, and he blamed it on sleep-deprivation. He clutched at the wall, not wanting to take his mother down with him should he fall. 

Monica clutched his arm, and propelled him in the direction of the waiting room. “We need to get you into a chair.” 

Jason shook his head. “I want to see him,” he said, “I want to see Spinelli. He still needs blood, right?”

Monica nodded, and though it looked like she was about to protest, she helped Jason walk to Spinelli’s room, and pushed him into the chair beside Spinelli’s hospital bed. Spinelli looked nothing like he had the last time Jason had seen him. The younger man was deathly pale; his dark hair stuck out at odd angles; and he was so still that it didn’t even look like he was breathing.

Jason reached out a shaky hand and brushed at Spinelli’s hair, trying in vain to straighten it out because he didn’t know what else to do. He was a man ill-used to inaction.

“How do we do this?” Jason turned to his mother. 

Monica was smiling at him and Spinelli. There was a soft sort of sadness around her eyes, but she pulled herself upright and nodded.

“I’ll have a nurse come in and set up the transfusion.”

“He can have as much of my blood as he needs, I don’t care what happens to me,” Jason said, “just make sure that Spinelli lives.”

“You’ll both live,” Monica said, and she chuckled a little nervously, “we won’t be giving him all of your blood, Jason, just a few pints.”

“And if he needs more than that,” Jason said, pinning her with a look, “you take it from me.”

Monica nodded, and left the room, tossing out, “I’ll be back with Epiphany.”

Jason turned away from the door as soon as it closed behind his mother, and he faced Spinelli, looking at him with a fresh set of eyes. He didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know if he’d misheard what his mother had said.

“My son?” he whispered, his heart hammered in his chest as he realized that he wanted it to be true, that he wanted to be Spinelli’s father. 

He leaned forward, and pressed his lips to Spinelli’s forehead, noting how cold the younger man’s skin felt to the touch. It made him shiver, and he vowed that once Spinelli recovered enough to leave the hospital, he’d be instilling a sense of self-preservation in the young man. That, if he had to, he’d employ whatever tactics it would take to convince the boy that he did not need to prove himself to anyone, least of all to him. 

Whether it was his mother’s words, or the thoughts that had been running through his head while he’d sat in the waiting room, Jason felt love well up inside of him. Son or not, he loved Spinelli, had loved him for a very long time now, but had, like so many others, taken the younger man for granted. 

“Never again,” Jason said, as he regarded his son, his son, “never again,” he promised, and he grasped Spinelli’s hand in his own and squeezed it, hoping that it would communicate some of what he felt.

It wasn’t an easy road to recovery for either Jason or Spinelli. The blood transfusion helped Spinelli to regain some color, and speed up his healing, but it left Jason, already emotionally worn and physically exhausted, drained, causing him to sleep for a full twenty-two hours. Though he was rested, he wasn’t happy that he’d missed Spinelli’s initial waking, and told the nurse who’d been assigned to them, that, next time Spinelli woke up, she was to wake him as well, no matter what. 

“Sir.”

Jason felt a slight pressure against his shoulder, and he pushed at the source of the disturbance, only to have it push back.

“Sir.” 

His shoulder was being jostled, and he fought against it, but the jostling didn’t cease. 

“Sir, you asked me to wake you up when Mr. Spinelli woke.”

Jason’s eyes flew open, and he suddenly remembered where he was, and why he was there. He sat up so quickly, that the nurse who’d been trying to wake him gave out a startled cry and backed up into Spineli’s bed.

“Sorry,” Jason apologized sheepishly.

“That’s okay, I’ll just leave you two,” the nurse said, as she all but fled the room. 

“Thank you,” Jason managed to say before the door clicked shut behind her.

Silence, punctuated by the steady, blip, blip, blip, of the heart monitor attached to Spinelli, permeated the room. Jason turned his head to find Spinelli, propped up into an almost sitting position by several pillows, staring at him with a quizzical look on his face.

“What’re you doing here?” Spinelli’s voice is quiet and hoarse. “You didn’t get shot too, did you?”

“No,” Jason said, and he propelled himself out of bed, resting on the edge of his mattress for a moment to let a bout of dizziness pass. “I wasn’t shot.”

Spinelli seemed to sag back against his pillows, as though a great big weight had been lifted off his chest. 

“When you didn’t wake up earlier, I thought…” Spinelli trailed off, looking away. 

Jason shook his head and made his way over to Spinelli’s bed. “I’m fine. Just a little light-headed and exhausted.”

“What happened?”

“You were shot, by Helena,” Jason answered, a little alarmed. 

“I remember that,” Spinelli said and then gestured at Jason, the movement causing him to wince as it pulled at the sutures below his clavicle. “What I don’t know is what happened to you. You look like you’ve been hit by a truck, Stone Cold.”

Jason chuckled and shook his head, unsurprised by Spinelli’s immediate concern for him. Trust his son, and that thought, Spinelli as his son, floored him, to be more worried about his uninjured friend than himself. 

“I’m fine,” Jason reassured him, and then he took a deep breath, and ran his hands through his hair. 

He had no idea how to do this, how to tell Spinelli that he was his father. He didn’t know any of the details himself – Monica believed that it was a girl he’d known when he was younger, before he’d suffered from the brain injury which had robbed him of a lifetime of memories.

Spinelli frowned at him, and lifted an eyebrow as though he didn’t quite believe him. Jason wondered how bad he looked; it had been days since he’d showered, he could only imagine what it was that Spinelli was seeing. 

“Spinelli,” Jason said, and then he grasped the younger man’s hand in an uncharacteristic move that made Spinelli’s frown deepen. He wasn’t sure what to say: ‘I’m your father,’ just didn’t sound like the right way to put it, especially not so abruptly. He wasn’t good with words.

“What is it?” Spinelli asked, and he tried to pull his hand away, as though burnt, but Jason wouldn’t relinquish his hold. 

“I don’t,” Jason looked to the ceiling and prayed that the right words would come, “I don’t know how to say this,” he said, and then he looked at Spinelli, and his heart thundered in his chest as it swelled with love, and awe, and pride.

“Am I dying?” Spinelli asked, his voice so small that Jason had to strain to hear it. 

“No, no,” Jason assured him, “you’re not dying. Spinelli, when you were brought in, you’d lost a lot of blood. You have a rare blood type,” Jason paused and forced himself to look into Spinelli’s eyes, “I have the same blood type. Monica, my mother, ran a D.N.A. test. Spinelli, you’re my son.”

Spinelli pulled his hand away, and Jason let him. The look on Spinelli’s face was hard for Jason to read, especially once the younger man looked away from him. He chewed on his lower lip and shook his head before looking up and piercing Jason with a fierce, hurt look.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he asked, his whole body trembling.

“What? No,” Jason said, confused as to how Spinelli could jump to that conclusion. “Why would you think that?”

Spinelli’s face fell and he looked away, but this time, Jason grasped him by the chin and made him look up. 

“Why would you think that I’m joking?” 

Spinelli shrugged.

“Spinelli, I’m your father, this isn’t a joke.”

“Why didn’t you want me?” Spinelli asked after what seemed like an eternity of time.

“I didn’t know about you, if I had…”

“You’d have hoisted me off on one of the Quartermaines, or…”

“I would have raised you myself,” Jason said fiercely, suddenly angry with Spinelli. “I…”

“You don’t have to do this,” Spinelli said, and his eyes were hard.

“Spinelli, as I sat in the waiting room, the only thought on my mind was you, and that was before I knew you were my son,” Jason said vehemently, “you don’t get to tell me what I do and do not have to do. Like it or not, I am your father, and,” Jason took a breath, willing Spinelli to believe him, “I love you.”

Spinelli blinked, and then his face crumpled as tears began to fall. He shook his head in denial, pushing away at Jason.

“I love you,” he repeated, and when that only resulted in more tears, he did the only thing he could think of; he pulled his son in for a hug, and just held onto him. 

It was awkward at first, Jason holding a stiff Spinelli in his arms, but then Spinelli sighed and hesitantly wrapped his arms around Jason. When Jason didn’t immediately pull away, Spinelli clung to him as though to a life preserver. 

Jason didn’t let go until the sobs subsided, and Spinelli grew sleep-heavy in his arms. He held Spinelli for a split-second longer before letting go. For a few minutes, Jason stood there; content just to watch his son sleep.


End file.
